A worker sprays water on the Barnwood Restaurant Wednesday to keep the dust down as a tractor tears into the building that will be replaced by a Starbucks.

Photo contributed/

Starbucks is moving to triple its presence in Ripon.Two new locations are being developed — one at North Ripon and River roads east of the Mistlin Sports Complex in an area that is seeing a surge in home building and the other at the former site of the Barnwood Restaurant at the East Main Street exit on Highway 99. The existing Starbucks at the Jack Tone Road exit at Highway 99 just over a mile north of the future Barnwood location. Manteca, by comparison with five times the population has six Starbucks locations.A demolition crew on Wednesday reduced the 35-year-old Barnwood Restaurant to a pile of rubble in five hours. John Mangelos, the chef who owned the Barnwood, stood with a teary eye as the jaws of a demolition tractor tore into the side of the two-story building.He watched as an electric circuit box that he paid $10, 000 for was ripped from its mountings with wires hanging from the jaws of the tractor along with air conditioners that were being destroyed in the demolition. Mangelos worked alongside his brother Joe and other family members years ago searching out old barns that were due to be torn down. It was the wood from those barns that they used to build their 2,400-square-foot restaurant. After the sale and before the demolition began, Mangelos offered the barn wood to the citizens of the community at a reduced price with much of it being hauled off for home projects.The Modesto Central Valley Demolition Company will have large trucks on the scene today to haul off the rubble and jack hammer up the asphalt to clear the site by Friday. Construction of the Starbucks will begin on Monday, Mangelos said, with completion of the exterior by March and an opening date in May. “Tomorrow this will be just an empty lot,” Mangelos said. Mangelos is also the president of the Ripon Historical Society and a past president of the Ripon Rotary Club. He served as a chef at three different Oylmpics.Mangelos shared the Barnwood food preparation for breakfast lunch and dinner for years with his sister Ella, herself an accomplished chef. They have penned two cookbooks sharing their prize recipes. His mother Katherine worked the evening shift as a hostess and server after making the rounds of her Avon clientele throughout the city and the rural community for some 59 years. Mangelos also hosted wine travel events to Europe and beyond for many of his faithful customers. The Barnwood was the established location for the Ripon Rotary Club with its weekly Wednesday noon meetings.